There’s no denying the existence of a market in which people simply don’t care about what kind of custom software features their phone has. All they care about is the fact that it’s cheap and can run apps. A company making phones for that market would be truly smart if they focused solely on hardware and let a mega-company with the time and resources to build great software take care of the heavy lifting. ZTE is a smart company.

Starting with the Hong Kong variant of the ZTE Blade Vec 4G, ZTE’s upcoming smartphones will use the Google Now Launcher as its default homescreen application. This is a win-win-win situation for consumers, ZTE and Google. Consumers get what is arguably one of the best products ever released by Google, Google Now, backed by what is undoubtedly the best product ever released by Google, Google Search, at a great price. ZTE gets to focus on hardware, cut production and maintenance costs and still offer their customers a top of the line software experience. Google will get to sit back and watch the sweet, sweet data flow in.

It seems like for forever now we’ve been talking about Google’s plans to reign in Android. With the new branding rules that have popped up for Android-powered devices and whispers on Google’s on-going battle with Samsung related to everything from branding to Samsung’s choice in smartwatch OS, it’s clear Google is serious about making Android a well-recognized product. You can bet Google is very happy to work with ZTE in making sure the Google Now Launcher will work well with all of their future products.